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Coding expertise is going to collapse from AI reliance

larsfaye.com

221–230 of 574 posts

Re: Coding expertise is going to collapse from AI reliance

#221
In my company the knowledge is starting to be devalued.

People are distrusting whole swaths of concepts because they do not understand how things actually work.

Like going away from zerotrust architecture to holding open a long polling connection.

At least I seem to remember that long polling wasn’t that great, but i start to even doubt myself.

Anyone wondering how the Roman Empire was wiped out? I guess we will find out soon

Re: Coding expertise is going to collapse from AI reliance

#222
post #48

100% We're already seeing this at the enterprise level. Companies have dictates from leadership that "if you're writing code manually, you're doing it wrong." Okay, that kind of works for a while. We are indeed producing a shit-ton of code, but the reality is that engineers are pumping out code faster than the humans can understand and (honestly) review it. That sounds great until you realize that "hey Claude, read t…

> That sounds great until you realize that "hey Claude, read this Jira ticket and implement the feature in this code base" isn't really worth $200K/year. When you factor in overhead and benefits, many companies were regularly paying that much for someone (many someones) to "read this Jira ticket and implement the feature". We are currently in the "centaur" phase where a human-AI combination produces the best output,…

Yes, but aren't you just restating the premise in more words?

Re: Coding expertise is going to collapse from AI reliance

#223
post #48

100% We're already seeing this at the enterprise level. Companies have dictates from leadership that "if you're writing code manually, you're doing it wrong." Okay, that kind of works for a while. We are indeed producing a shit-ton of code, but the reality is that engineers are pumping out code faster than the humans can understand and (honestly) review it. That sounds great until you realize that "hey Claude, read t…

We have a product guy on the team who was in a deeply not technical role before AI who is trying to do the “hey Claude, read this Jira ticket, implement” thing. It doesn’t work for the vast majority of tickets he attempts because he doesn’t have the necessary understanding to even start thinking about if the solution that the autocomplete generates is even remotely workable. And that’s with fancy dev loops and whatno…

But isn't it only a matter of time before the AI generated autocomplete will contain the correct solution? What then?

Re: Coding expertise is going to collapse from AI reliance

#224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That sounds great until you realize that "hey Claude, read this Jira ticket and implement the feature in this code base" isn't really worth $200K/year. When you factor in overhead and benefits, many companies were regularly paying that much for someone (many someones) to "read this Jira ticket and implement the feature". We are currently in the "centaur" phase where a human-AI combination produces the best output,…

We've gone through this with chess, and the days when a human can do anything to help AI there are long past; the human can only drag it down. It seems to me to be a form of the bitter lesson. I expect this will happen in every field where we don't add guardrails to require humans in the network. I have a hard time seeing regulation happening around this in the US but vanity may also serve, will CEOs be satisfied rul…

Well, maybe. But most fields of human endeavor aren't very much like a board game with clear, unchanging rules and a single, unambiguous objective.

Re: Coding expertise is going to collapse from AI reliance

#226

Keep in mind also that LLMs are currenctly heavily subsidized. Once VCs money are gonna run out, you will see the real price, and your 200K per year dev is probably nothing.

A $1200 GPU is all a reasonably capable engineer needs for each work stream. The cloud prices are a scam.

Re: Coding expertise is going to collapse from AI reliance

#227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have a product guy on the team who was in a deeply not technical role before AI who is trying to do the “hey Claude, read this Jira ticket, implement” thing. It doesn’t work for the vast majority of tickets he attempts because he doesn’t have the necessary understanding to even start thinking about if the solution that the autocomplete generates is even remotely workable. And that’s with fancy dev loops and whatno…

But isn't it only a matter of time before the AI generated autocomplete will contain the correct solution? What then?

So far, the LLMs I've used need problems to be fairly specifically scoped, or they don't produce the correct solution. Scoping problems correctly is a different skill-set than implementation, but it's still a technical skill that is expected from mid-level and higher engineers.

Re: Coding expertise is going to collapse from AI reliance

#228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At some point the whims of the CEOs don’t win. The shareholders demand more growth.

Demand from whom, if not the CEO?

Of course the demand will be directed at the CEO and they will have to provide results or be replaced.

Re: Coding expertise is going to collapse from AI reliance

#229
post #5

Are engineers still making 100s of thousands a year still just for vibe coding while a nurse and other skilled / highly trained medical professionals working their butt off make half of that? Do we think there is going to be a correction for the vibe coders? Pardon I know such question is controversial but thinking ahead.

I want a world where teachers on average make more than software engineers. If we figure that out, everything else will be fine in the long run.

Re: Coding expertise is going to collapse from AI reliance

#230
I've, more than once, gone long spans of time doing purely management and architecture level work, then returned to programming. A little rusty? Sure. But I never forgot how to program or lost the skills that actually matter. Seems mostly like a non-issue for people already in the field.

The real issue will be with people that never learn it in the first place.

And even that isn't so bad, learning programming isn't some insurmountable hurdle. It took me less than 6 months from no knowledge to my first job.

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